


Somewhere to Hide

by somethingnerdythiswaycomes



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: (a little), Canon Injury, Dry Humping, M/M, Post - Pacific Rim Uprising, Post-Battle, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, spoilers for the movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-04-07 05:02:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14073447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethingnerdythiswaycomes/pseuds/somethingnerdythiswaycomes
Summary: The only part of the battle they don’t put into the simulators is the aftermath.  He could see it on Jake’s face after they faced Obsidian Fury that first time in Sydney, and again after they destroyed it in Siberia.  Still feeling the injuries that were dealt to the Jaeger, but not seeing them on you anywhere.  Suddenly standing a hundredth of the height you were just minutes ago.





	Somewhere to Hide

**Author's Note:**

> I saw Pacific Rim Uprising and immediately wrote this. You're welcome.

The only part of the battle they don’t put into the simulators is the aftermath.

He could see it on Jake’s face after they faced Obsidian Fury that first time in Sydney, and again after they destroyed it in Siberia.  Still feeling the injuries that were dealt to the Jaeger, but not seeing them on you anywhere.  Suddenly standing a hundredth of the height you were just minutes ago.  The – the chaos, the panic, cataloguing the other pilots and Jtechs and every other single person so you know who didn’t make it this time.

It’s worse, after Japan.

There are actual injuries to deal with, not just phantom ones.  There’s death, so much of it, spread throughout the entire Pacific Rim, but especially in their own Shatterdome.

But there’s also...

“Nate, brother, did you fucking see that?!” Jake shouts as soon as he steps onto the PPDC transport plane.  Nate’s sitting in the back, still keeping an eye on Dr. Geiszler where he’s strapped into prisoner transport.

“I was there, Jake,” he replies tiredly, but still not able to fight the grin on his face.  Jake grins back, clapping his hand on his shoulder.  There’s still a connection between them, lasting in their neural networks longer than they can consciously be aware of it, and they wince in unison as it jars Nate’s injury.

“You saw the part were Amara and I blasted that ugly bastard halfway down the mountain with a Jager rocket, though, right?”

“I must’ve missed that part when I was hunting down the doctor, here.”

Jake’s face falls for a second, just a second, until Nate lets his grin spread again.

“Oh, fuck you, man.”

“You did great,” Nate says sincerely.  “Your dad would be proud.”

Jake’s face blanks for a second – just a second, when Nate thinks he’s said the wrong thing, the really, really wrong thing – before Jake swallows and dips his head.

“Yeah,” Jake says hoarsely.  “I think he would be, too.”

They fly back to the Shatterdome like that, the cadets leaning against each other in the seats through the body of the plane, the two of them sitting in the back with Dr. Geiszler still passed out on the side.

Nate watches Jake out of the corner of his eye, the gradual shift as exhaustion sets in, as his body starts to figure out what injuries it needs to pay attention to and which are just lingering neural imprints.  When he sees Jake staring at the empty seat, the seat that should be filled by Suresh.

“They’re collecting his remains,” Nate whispers, leaning closer so none of the cadets hear.  Jake nods and lets out a sigh.  “Almost all of them made it.  Not a bad success rate.”

“Considering last time any Jaegers faced a Cat V half of them died, yeah, it’s a decent improvement.”

“We’ll get it down to zero for the next one,” Nate says confidently, squeezing Jake’s knee lightly.  Jake looks down at his hand, then up quickly at Nate.

And Nate knows what that spark in Jake’s eyes means.  It’s the desire to remember you’re alive, that you can feel something other pain and fear and desperation.  He’s felt it himself any number of times, but most of the time he took it back to his bunk.

Suddenly, he gets a flash of a memory – the night Jake tried to pilot that Mark IV on his own, right after… right after Jake had kissed him, high off adrenaline from their increasingly high simulator scores that meant they’d be getting a Jaeger of their own in the next week, and Nate was terrified Jake had seen something in his memories, something that would have made his dad beat him if he’d lived long enough to know, and he’d pushed him away and mustered up some false bravado that led to…

“I was scared, then,” Nate whispers.

“I know,” Jake murmurs back.

Another memory surfaces – this one’s not his, he knows, because he definitely never squatted in half of a mansion, or touched himself thinking about his own body.

“Gross,” Amara groans from her seat, and Nate’s cheeks flame red.  “I’m still in your brain, idiot.”

“Stop sending me things like that,” he hisses at Jake, who has to slap a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing loud enough to wake the rest of the cadets.

“Won’t need memories like that soon, Nate,” Jake whispers in his ear, and Nate shudders.  “How much longer you think this trip’ll last?”

“Another half-hour,” Nate mutters.

Jake hums.  “Pity.”

“I have to go to medical when we get back.”

“I’ll wait,” Jake assures him, and then settles in to nap for the rest of the trip.

Nate wishes he could sleep, too, just to stop replaying the memories that Jake shoved into his head.

 

.oOo.

 

Nate’s only a little disappointed to step out of the medical wing and not find Jake leaning against the wall how he’d left him.  To be fair, he was in there for a fair amount of time – they had to address the obvious wound on his side that had made him unable to finish the battle in Lady Avenger, and then check the rest of him to make sure all the neural imprint injuries he was feeling weren’t really fractures or muscle tears.

But after some stitches, an antibiotic IV, and stern instructions to come right down if anything felt wrong, he was free to leave.

Maybe Jake had decided it wasn’t worth it.  At least there were no Jaegers he could attempt to solo-pilot and then pass out like Jake had down after he was rejected.

He definitely wasn’t expecting to open the doors to his quarters and find Jake in his bed, already down to a pair of sweats that were definitely Nate’s based on how tight they fit around Jake’s waist and thighs.

“What’re you doing here?” Nate blurts out, his first instinct always the wrong one.

“I told you I’d wait for you,” Jake replies, stretching his arms over his head, and no, no, Nate is not looking at his chest and his…  “They x-ray every bone in your body or something?  Took a while.”

“Pretty much,” Nate says, finally taking a step toward the bed and letting the door close behind him.  “You probably need to get checked out tomorrow.”

“Eh, it can wait.  I got something more important to do.”  Jake winks at Nate, gesturing him closer with a curl of his finger.  Nate goes.  “You’re the something more important, in case you couldn’t tell.”

“You’re an idiot,” Nate mutters, but when Jake’s fingers curl around his and pull him down onto the bed next to Jake, he never even thinks of stopping him.

“Well then, you’re banging an idiot, so joke’s on you.”  Jake laughs then, and it relaxes Nate enough that he can at least smile.  Then he reaches out to cup Nate’s cheek, runs his thumb over Nate’s lips.  “This is just like eleven years ago.”

“Yeah,” Nate breathes.  “Smaller quarters, though.”

“Yeah.  No bunk bed, either.”

Nate smiles, and Jake’s thumb traces it.

“If I kiss you this time, are you going to run away again?” Jake asks.

“I won’t,” Nate replies, and leans into him.  He’s not sure who kisses who, and in the next moment, he’s not even sure he cares.  All he cares about is Jake’s lips on his, Jake’s hand still cupping his face and guiding him closer with unbelievable tenderness, and Nate’s hand settling on the bare skin at Jake’s waist.

Their tongues meet, twist together, rub against each other, and this is the heaven that Cadet Lambert thought he’d never get to see or touch or taste.

“Damn,” Jake sighs, pulling away.  “I kind of hoped you’d be bad at that so I could make fun of you for it.”

“Too bad for you, I guess,” Nate replies with a smirk.  “I don’t have the same problem with you.”

Jake looks utterly betrayed for a second, before his eyes narrow with determination.  “I’ll show you ‘bad kisser,’” he grunts, pushing Nate on his back before climbing over him and sealing their lips together again.

Nate’s comeback – whatever it was going to be, he’s forgotten now – gets swallowed by Jake’s mouth.  Jake’s still got his hand on him, in his hair, now, tugging just a bit, getting Nate in the perfect position for Jake to kiss him senseless.  Nate pulls at Jake’s hip, hooks his leg around Jake’s knee until he collapses down onto him.  They moan into the kiss, and Nate rocks up against Jake’s body first.

“Wait, wait,” Jake pants, pulling back an inch and staring into Nate’s dazed eyes.  “You’re not just doing this because you feel bad for me or anything, right?”

“Why would I feel bad for you?” Nate gasps, and pulls Jake into another kiss.  He doesn’t stop Nate this time when Nate bucks up against him, but he does grab Jake’s waist and push him back into the bed.

“Your stitches,” Jake mutters against Nate’s cheek.

“Fuck,” Nate spits.  “What can we—”

“Just—” Jake holds him still and grinds carefully into the cradle of his hips.  Nate moans, his head tilted back on the pillow.

“How are you so good at this?” he groans, trailing his hand down Jake’s bare shoulder as Jake rolls his hips perfectly against Nate’s.

“Lived 11 years off a military base,” Jake pants, pressing his lips to the column of Nate’s neck.  “Lots of action out in the real world.”

“I’m the only action you need now,” Nate tells him, grabbing his ass in a tight grip.  Jake bucks against him and moans, sinking his teeth into the curve of Nate’s shoulder.

They lay off the snarking for a minute, too preoccupied with the drag of their cocks together through their pants, with Nate’s skin under Jake’s mouth and Jake’s ass firm in Nate’s hands.

“C’mon, just…” Nate moans, trying to buck up into him.  “Jake—”

“Almost there, I swear,” Jake groans, kissing at a new spot on Nate’s neck, sucking on the spot to leave another mark.

“Jake, I’m—”

“C’mon, Nate, c’mon,” Jake pants, barely pulling back from him, just grinding in, and in, and…

Nate’s back arches as he comes, violently, still in his post-drop sweats.  He’s not aware of much past the bone-deep pleasure exploding in him, the tension sinking out of him all at once, but he can still feel when Jake’s hips stutter against his and then he stills, his forehead resting against Nate’s shoulder as he moans into his chest.

It takes time to recover, the exhaustion of the last couple days settling over them all of a sudden like a fog.

“Fuck,” Nate murmurs, Jake still sprawled out on top of him.

“Yes, that’s what that was, Nate.  Are you really that much of a virgin?”

Nate tries not to react, but Jake definitely feels the way he tenses.

“No way,” Jake breathes, sitting up just enough to look at Nate’s face.  “No fucking way, man.  But you’re so – handsome, and sexy, and…”

“Shut up,” Nate mumbles.  “I had more important things going on.”

“I’m the more important thing, you can admit it,” Jake declares, flopping back onto him.  “Anyway, I’ll take care of that soon.”

“That’s saying I’ll _let_ you.”

Jake just hums contentedly. “When do your stitches come out?”

 

**Author's Note:**

> join me on tumblr @ somethingnerdythiswaycomes
> 
> Also there's gonna be a sequel y'all know me


End file.
